Receiving a diabetes diagnosis starts a vicious cycle of negative emotions. Anxiety, stress, hopelessness, and restlessness following the diagnosis negatively impact your quality of life. Together with the burden of diabetes, they amplify the negative impact. As a result, the patient’s adherence to effective therapies slides.

What’s the Link Between Diabetes and Negative Emotions?

A wealth of study now supports that psychological distress could be a risk factor for diabetes. On the other hand, having a chronic disease is a well-known risk factor for a variety of mental problems.

A 2014 study published in The Diabetes Educator found that negative emotions promoted behavioral risk factors for diabetes. For example, an increased intake of sweetened beverages and decreased participation in physical activities.

Have Diabetes? It’s Time to Look on the Bright Side of Life

Now is the best time to focus on how beautiful your life is despite the diagnosis of diabetes. The following list consists of 6 positive psychological attributes that will help you live a healthy and happy life.

#1. Self-regulation

Self-regulation is an inherent ability to control your thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Nonetheless, you can learn it through a series of training. Self-regulatory learning strategies can help to define your goal, plan a healthy diet, prevent overeating and have a better glucose control.

#2. Motivation

Motivation is an intrinsic impulse that fuels your desires and actions. If you are motivated to achieve your treatment goal, you will work to take care of your health. The noticeable effects of a high motivational state include intake of a healthy diet, regular participation in physical activities, avoidance of unhealthy foods, and proper monitoring of blood glucose levels.

What are you waiting for? Find your source of motivation, it could be your sweetheart’s smile or a pat on the back from your loved ones. Once you find what motivates you, stick to it.

#3. Resilience

You must have read somewhere that Thomas Edison failed more than 1,000 times before he finally invented the light bulb. It is a typical example of how resilience helps you achieve what you previously thought was unachievable. In psychology, resilience is a person’s ability to adapt to adverse life circumstances. For the patients with diabetes, resilience promotes healthy behavior that in turn allows better control over blood glucose levels. Moreover, resilience is key to both self-regulation and motivation.

Shailesh is a registered pharmacist and freelance medical writer from Nepal. He has a keen interest in psychology, behavioral science, and health technology. He loves coffee, traveling, cricket and reading.

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